Secrets of mystic stone circle

AT the centre of the Britain's most iconic ancient monument, I watch the sun rise through vast prehistoric stones. They loom over me, stark against a slowly lightening December sky and Salisbury Plain's gently rolling landscape.

I'm one of a small group on an out-of-hours visit to Stonehenge, where, without the hordes, I'm lucky enough to witness one of Neolithic man's most amazing feats.

I trace the concentric circles and horseshoes of the stones and spot little axe-heads carved into their surfaces. The towering uprights, topped by huge lintels, are like giant doorways to another world. I leave impressed and intrigued but only a little wiser as to what exactly it is, who built it and what it was for.

Those questions and more may be answered with the opening of a £27million visitor centre, which, with its undulating roof mimics the surrounding landscape, sits in a dip well out of sight of the stones.

At the exhibition I watch a 360° video in which Stonehenge morphs from empty vista to ditch and earth bank before seeing the sun set between the Great Trilithon, the two tallest uprights.

The circle is aligned to the setting sun at winter solstice and summer solstice's rising sun, which draws pagan and new age worshippers here for vibrant ceremonies.

But Stonehenge is too old to have been built by druids, though experts now believe it was an important temple. Surrounded by lesser circles and burial barrows, it is the towering achievement of a Stone Age people, built without the help of metal, cranes or forklifts.

We view the deer antlers used for digging and the hammer stones builders used to chip the great blocks with, hewing their shape and carefully crafting the joints that have fixed the stones for 4,500 years.

The circle is aligned to the setting sun at winter solstice and summer solstice's rising sun, which draws pagan and new age worshippers here for vibrant ceremonies

We marvel at Neolithic homes at Durrington Walls two miles away, the site, possibly, of Stonehenge's builders. We spy pretty bone pins, animal bones, strewn after meals, and fragments of grooved clay pots in which food was cooked.

Restoration of a few squarish, small, wattle and daub huts is underway close to the centre and by Easter, visitors will be able to sit at the hearth of a Neolithic family. "This was a sophisticated society," says Simon Hurley, chief executive of English Heritage, introducing us to the reconstructed face of a 5,000-year-old local man.

"They were able to muster and organise hundreds of people to shift these massive stones, which have been traced to as far away as Wales."

Boarding the visitor shuttle, three coaches pulled by a Land Rover, we trundle across Salisbury Plain to the stones. It's usual opening hours and we cannot enter the circle so we walk around it, noting the Avenue, the processional way linking the site to the River Avon and another, recently-found, circle.

It will soon be possible to explore along the Avenue (with new self-guide maps) to discover barrows and the ceremonial routes approaching the stones, just as the builders intended years ago.

Winter solstice is on December 21, probably the equivalent of Christmas for Stonehengers. I asked English Heritage historian Susan Greaney what may have been happening 4,500 years ago. "People will have gathered from all over. At Durrington they slaughtered pigs to feast on barbecued pork and beef stew. As light faded they would go to the sacred temple for a culminating ritual as the sun set."

As the sun set on my own visit, I depart just a little wiser, yet still intrigued by this mysterious icon of our distant past.